Ever wanted to be in charge? Well, in my own little world I will be, one day. Just not quite yet. I'm a bit tired at the moment... maybe I'll take over after I've had my little nap.
The United Dingdom - stating the bleeding obvious so you don't have to.
(Sign up to get updates direct to email or follow @Battsby on Twitter)

Pages

Friday, 16 September 2016

Round the bend

Multi-tasking? Some days it is all I can do to watch the
telly AND listen to it; I tend to drift off. As the old saw goes “Sometime, oi
sits an’ oi thinks. Sometimes, oi jes’ sits...” And when it comes to driving, it’s
a hard enough thing to do properly anyway, without added distractions such as
scenery, passengers, other cars and the radio. The radio, you say, surely
that’s not much of a distraction but, trust me, it’s tricky. I have often had
to forego the details of a piece of radio drama, or a searing political
analysis in order to concentrate on negotiating the new road layout around
roadworks, or even to just creep forward, three yards at a time, in the regular
snarl-ups that constitute motorway travel in Britain today.

When Britain’s first motorway, which later became the M6,
opened in 1958 (as old as me and just as slow) people travelled out from Preston
to wait on bridges and wave at the cars below. Such was the novelty. Today,
people travel miles to avoid the clogged arteries of the wheezy old transport network.
It’s a tedious drag, fraught with peril as lane-hoppers, tail-gaters and a mad procession
of vehicular morons try to kill you as you’re trying to concentrate on the
weather forecast and it’s not often I agree with the Daily Mirror but we are in
the midst of a new epidemic of stupidity and selfishness and downright criminal
negligence.

What is so novel about mobile communications that dribbling
morons will queue for days to own a device that ultimately appears to own them?
Some people are so attached to their electronic owner I suspect they rely on it to tell
them when to breathe in and out. And even the sanest can find it next to impossible
not to check their screen every few minutes. So it’s little wonder that there
is a rising toll of death due to telephone on Britain’s roads. They are
talking about bigger fines, but I’d suggest an on-the-spot day in a cell and
your car impounded for a week... along with your phone.

The roads were dangerous enough with just British morons
on them but down here in the southeast you are just as likely to be taken out
by a Latvian as by a home-grown lunatic. You have to wonder whether the
standard of their driving test is the equivalent of ours, not that the
acquisition of a full licence necessarily says anything about competence, but
we’ve all seen those Russian dashcam videos. Maybe everybody should follow the
good example of a young Pole, Janusz, who recently applied for a UK driving
licence.

As a pre-requisite he had to undertake a medical
examination, including an eye test. In the consulting room the doctor dimmed
the lights and on the opposite wall illuminated the eye test chart. “Read the
top line for me, please.” Janusz was instructed, which he duly did with ease.
Then with alternate eyes covered he was asked to read lower and smaller-font lines
until the doc was satisfied. Finally, the doctor gave him a card with the tiny
letters: 'C Z W I X N O S T A C Z.' “Can you read this?” he was asked. Janusz grinned
and replied “Read it? He’s a friend of mine!”